Dreams can come true. So can nightmares - and no one knows that better than Siri Braddock. Siri has just moved to Wicks End in Salem, Massachusetts. Wicks End is not your average street, and Siri Braddock is not your average teenage girl. She's more curious than most, and the stuff her dreams are made of put her on the trail of Salem's deepest, darkest mystery. Haunted ruins and graveyard stakeouts are all part of Siri's weird, new life on Wicks End. Something strange is happening in Salem. Young people are disappearing, including Siri's best friend, Mallory. A bizarre group has flown into town, and not on planes In an attic trunk Siri finds an old dress with a mysterious parchment sewn into the hem. What in the world does a dress have to do with stolen Egyptian mummies, a gallows curse, and a haunted insane asylum? Siri is determined to find out Salem's notorious past reaches out for Siri when a strange, young man sees in her a clue to a three hundred year old puzzle. He's closer than Siri thinks, as close as her own shadow. Wicks End is not average. Neither is Siri's shadow, the one with the glowing green eyes that follows her around. Whoever or whatever he is, he's after the same thing she's after. Somehow Siri needs to find out why she's being followed and how Salem's hidden world of dark secrets ties in with her strange, new life on Wicks End.